to protect the affordable care act, because we believe it is a right , health care is a right of everyone, not just a privilege for the few. that's it. reporter: thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: later, house speaker paul ryan spoke about the affordable care act and president trump's executive order on immigration. this is 15 minutes. rep. ryan: we continue to make progress on the american people. this week, we have wiped out a rule that threatens to wipe out thousands of dollars -- thousands of jobs in coal country.

we will be able to bring immediate relief to those workers, and this is just the start. we will ask for more resolutions to deliver relief for excessive regulations. when you think about the fact that the obama administration has issued regulations at the rate of one every three days, this israel real change, this is job creation. toalso continue to act repeal and replace obamacare. yesterday, there was a committee on how to improve medicaid. today, the committee is holding a hearing to provide four bills for relief from collapsing markets. president obama said, "my gut principle is that temperature -- is that people do better when there is competition." isannot agree more area that the way obamacare is sold, but it is not how it is turned out. in fact, choice and competition

have gone down so much in our markets that 1/3 of all counties in our country today have only one insurer to choose from. that is not a choice. .hat is a monopoly i'll top of that, another 37% of all counties in america have only two insurers to choose from. 70% of all the counties in america have a monopoly or duopoly. people are paying a whole lot more for less. that is why this law is collapsing, and we will keep our promise to repair and rprints -- replay or and -- epair and replace this law. questions?

reporter: two religion questions. rep. ryan: are you going to wait until sunday? reporter: the president says he wants to get rid of the johnson amendment. rep. ryan: i have always supported that. reporter: would you support a religious freedom executive order if that allowed discrimination against gays and lesbians? rep. ryan: i am not familiar with what are you talking about. we do not want the little sisters for the poor to be forced to buy coverage that violates their conscience. may, first,so, if i there has been reports of a difficult call between the president and prime minister of australia. now john mccain has called the australian ambassador. do you think what mccain did is the right move, and what would you say to president trump -- rep. ryan: i don't know about the veracity of those reports or the content of the call.

i know prime minister turnbull, he was in my office a couple of months ago, a very important ally. australia is a central ally and they will continue to be. i think it is important that prime ministers and heads of state are able to have candid and private conversations with one another. reporter: my second question, the president also referenced arnold schwarzenegger at the prayer breakfast. rep. ryan: did he do the accent? reporter: schwarzenegger tweeted to the president that perhaps they should switch jobs, trump go to the apprentice and the president -- rep. ryan: i am not going to comment on this stuff. let's talk about policy. reporter: you often mention a choice in health care. is there a particular model you have in mind? what is the model you point to? rep. ryan: there is a model he ran on last year that you can go

to bettergop.com and look at. you want a vibrant employer market. we want medicaid to work so the states can innovate and doctors take medicaid patients. we want medicare to be solvent, something you can depend on and that what is going to be there when you retire. what we want is choices. we don't want one choice, it is not a choice. we want to have more insurers and providers in the marketplace competing against each other for our businesses, consumers, and patience. we want patients and our doctors to be the driving force, instead of some government regulator telling you what you have to buy and where you want to buy it. we want a lot of insurers competing for our business. that is what i mean when i say choice. it is the cornerstone of the free enterprise system in america. the more choices you have, the more competition there is, consumers benefit, and

look, as you heard me say how few choices and options there are because of obamacare. it is not coincidental then that we have double-digit premium increases every year, that the deductibles for obamacare exchange plans are three times as high as the deductibles for people in large group insurance markets that they get the help from their jobs so clearly this law isn't working. it is collapsing and, yes, this is what we call a death spiral. you're not getting the kind of pooling that needs to be allowed with choice and competition to get rates down, so we have to step in and replace this law before it gets too late. before people lose their insurance. reporter: let me ask you about all this discussion about the word repair that you guys are starting to use. speaker ryan: the words. reporter: there's been some pushback on that. nancy pelosi just said you guys are having a vocabulary change, the allegation you're intentionally rebranding this. can you respond to this? speaker ryan: no. i will say there's miscommunication or misinterpretation of what we're trying to say.

our job is to repair the american health care system and rescue it from the collapse that it's in and the best way to repair a health care system is to repeal and replace obamacare. it's not an either/or. if you want to repair the american health care system you have to repeal the law that's destroying it and replace it with a system that's much better. yeah. reporter: mr. speaker, thank you. speaker ryan: i know most of you but thank you for saying who you are. reporter: can you give us an update on the timeline for the affordable care act next step? i talked to chairman upton and he said he didn't know when the committee would move language. and to follow-up on nancy's question. do you think the business should be allowed to -- speaker ryan: i voted for enda in 2004. reporter: is it based on religious grounds? speaker ryan: i don't believe in discrimination in the workplace, period. what was your health care question? reporter: the timeline. speaker ryan: i'll defer to the

chairman when he wants to have the markup. we want to move it by the end of the first quarter. reporter: do you support capping conclusions for employer-sponsored plans? speaker ryan: i had a bill with tom coburn, devin nunes and richard burr when we were debating obamacare. my position is clear. where congress goes on this is an open question. that's one of the ways you can finance tax credits. there are other ways to financing tax credits as well. yes. reporter: and you spoke about the muslim ban. i'm wondering if you're totally comfort right -- comfortable right now with trump's executive order? speaker ryan: you know it's not a muslim ban. if it were i would be against it. we are a tolerant, pleuralistic country. we are and we will be. it's really important. the bill we passed last year, if you recall, after the paris

shooting it became clear to us that one of the terrorists infiltrated the refugee population coming from syria. so we wanted to make sure that didn't happen here in this country. that's sort of like national security 101. and then when we inquired among our professionals at homeland security and the f.b.i., can you properly vet these people to make sure that this doesn't happen in america? they said, no, we can't. that's why we passed legislation with 289 votes, big bipartisan bill, saying let's pause this program until we can figure out how to get it right. that's effectively what this is about. so to your point about religious persecution, presidents always and often put preferences in refugee populations. i think president obama had one for sexual orientation. they didn't call that a sexual orientation test. he put a preference in for sexual orientation. religious minorities are being persecuted. there's nothing wrong preferring religious minorities from persecution. the yazidis are persecuted.

christians are being persecuted. so there's wrong with saying we are going to take into account minority religious persecution with our refugee situation. reporter: thank you, mr. speaker. what about, though -- and this is the question about australia. a question with the executive order. what about the perception overseas? do you have concerns? speaker ryan: of course i do. reporter: some people did say he did get in the grille of the australian prime minister. speaker ryan: i didn't read the transcripts. reporter: even if that's not true there is a perception. speaker ryan: i do think there is a perception issue. the loose rhetoric to suggest this is a muslim ban or religious test furthers that misperception. i do think people need to pause and look at the actual context that. look at the press conference that secretary kelly had to put this in the proper perspective

as to not get it misinterpreted. reporter: you had to have that press conference. speaker ryan: i said this on tuesday. i think it could have been done a lot better. green cardholders, nobody wanted green cardholders to get caught up in this. going forward let's not saying something that it's not so we further misperceptions. reporter: regarding rex tillerson's confirmation. are you concerned that the trump administration will now try and roll back sanctions on russia? speaker ryan: well, my position on sanctions are pretty clear. i think rex tillerson will be a great secretary of state. i think those that haven't followed him will be closely surprised. he is a capable man and he's a good model for secretary of state. i don't know what their policy

will be for russia. i am a russia hawk. i think the sanctions should have been done a while ago. reporter: do you think a lot of this stuff, you talk about the rollout, this came through congress, would this be a more smooth process? speaker ryan: are you talking about the executive order? reporter: yeah. speaker ryan: they don't have a full cabinet in place yet so i think it's important to get their cabinet up and running so these interagency reviews can be done well and i think going forward they're going to do a better job of these things. reporter: mr. speaker, stephanie. donald trump tweeted this morning he's going to review the so-called dumb deal with australia.

that's the first we heard from the president directly about what's been a very confusing series of messages from the white house and the state department and australia. is it problematic the way the diplomacy is being conducted and should australia be worried about the relationship with the new president? speaker ryan: no. i know your country well. i met with your leaders continuously over the last number of years. no, australia is an important and essential ally. it will continue to be. you may not have been to many press conferences. i don't quote or comment on the tweet of the hour. >> last question. speaker ryan: sorry. reporter: do you think additional sanctions should be placed on iran? speaker ryan: i would be in favor of additional sanctions on iran. i'd like to put as much toothpaste back in the tube as possible. i think the last administration appeased iran too much. i think they went too far with iran and as a result iran is far more activist than it otherwise would be. iran, don't forget, is the largest, greatest sponsor of terrorism in the world. the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.

iran writes on their missiles in farsi, hebrew and english saying "death to america" and tests them. this is not a friendly country. yeah, i think we need to have a tougher iran policy. reporter: and do you think -- speaker ryan: i think we should stop appeasing iran. offerser: david trains iraqi translators who worked with the military and former translators will talk about their experiences. male in the reason it is is something that i have learned. too not like to be forced like people. i like to be led to like people through example. change? to be a

better american? >> that was a remarkable moment. i did not realize -- there were more calls after that. how powerful it was. there was something in his voice and you can hear it. it was so authentic, something that most of us will not admit , i am prejudiced -- >> sunday night, the president of the public policy organization -- was a guest on washington journal in august 2016 wayne gary called. she talks about that interaction and her follow-up. >> partner reason is that you can remember this is august. we have had this sort of racially charged summer with donald's campaign, black lives matter, police shootings, tragic events in baton rouge, dollars.

it was really a time when people felt like all they were seeing on television was bad news and here was first a white man admitting that he was prejudiced which for people of color was, we just said, finally. >> sunday night on q&a. night, radio talkshow host hugh hewitt talks about his latest book, the fourth way: the conservative playbook. he is interviewed by a new daily news columnist paired >> what did the gop do to avoid this sort of spitting on their power and not make the most of this opportunity which could be over in two years? >> the democrats had a long time. did did the stimulus, they obamacare and dodd frank and all of